Thought it had a wonderful and interesting build up, but was highly dissatisfied with the ending.
It is hard to pinpoint what exactly is wrong with the film. Ritchie's kinetic style, the period 60s setting and the design are all suited to the material, the film seems well cast and the tone of the film seems spot-on. Perhaps it hews too close to the Bond formula at times - Cavill almost seems like he is auditioning for the role here - but equally, there is a distinct lack of chemistry between the two leads. Both Hammer and Cavill are convincing on their own, but their scenes together don't seem to work as well as they should and for a film like this that relies on their pairing, not only for this story, but also for possible future instalments, this is a glaring problem.
I give it a full +1 on the rating just because...
Beating a guy to death with a Tonka Truck.
The problem with coming to a popular film like this later on is that hype gets in the way. With no awareness of the brand or comic, yet having been told numerous times how great this is, it is difficult to approach this in the right manner to review. There is no doubt that it is a lot of fun and a large part of this is down to Pratt who nails the lead, Quinn. Its bright and colourful (a welcome change to the lived in feel of many other sci-fantasy films) and confident in it's execution. Yet equally it is part of a Marvel formula that started to wear thin after the first Avengers movie - for all the talk of how different this film was to the usual Marvel film, it's only real surprise is just how tied to the Marvel template the film is - everyone trying to get hold of a MacGuffin of unspeakable power, culminating in a large scale battle and fight scenes that unfortunately lead to very little of consequence, with all our heroes surviving to fight another day and a tease as to where this is all leading to. Admittedly, the fun here is in the different characters they have created. But If Marvel are serious about creating a cinematic universe where all these stories are interconnected then at some point they are going to have to take a risk in the storytelling - this isn't it!
So, this where I learned that psychedelic cyberpunk experimental film is not for me. Despite two excellent horror sequences (the subway chase scene and the initial scene where the woman tries to comfort the man come to mind) and very sharp stop motion animation, the lack of a clear narrative really pulled this one down for me. The meaningless gore and moralizing anti-sexuality were incredibly off-putting to me, even as a fan, albeit a casual one, of horror and exploitation films. I might be convinced to watch the other films in the series, but this one was, at times, torturous.
I recommend watching Florence Foster Jenkins: A World of Her Own before you see this movie; it basically is a documentary on Florence and just how delusional she was and how the people around her basically took her money by giving her praise. I did enjoy this movie with Streep (and I am not 60+ years old). This movie was good, it stays true to Florence's character since that was just how she was; she's KNOWN to be the world's worst opera singer and the movie delivers in showing that and showing her iconic moment of selling out Carnegie Hall. It's silly and touching at times. If you're in the mood to learn a little bit and have a few laughs, I recommend this movie. If you want to know more about FFJ before seeing this movie, watch the documentary.
Movies like this are the reason I watch movies. The film doesn't promise you anything, and the plot sounds kind of silly. It even starts out a little weak, but it draws you in and doesn't let go, and by the end you don't even care that you just watched a movie that all took place in a small room. Amazing film.
The structure was a mess. Any enjoyment I would have had in the movie is ruined by how poorly scripted it was.
Why are you rating movies that haven't even been made yet?
Mockingjay Part 2's biggest mistake is being completely faithful to the book, considering that it is the worst one of the trilogy. They had the chance to make the story better but chose to stick to what they had. Being the final chapter of the story, it has emotional bits, but miserably (and unfortunately) fails to sell them, rushing the scenes which we were supposed to remember the most. However, its political and action turmoils are its best parts and were beautifully developed. After all, piecing the four movies together, it remains a good story.
What happens when you give the keys to the Star Trek kingdom to the director of the Fast and the Furious movies? You get a franchise known for its thematic depth and attention to character reduced to a series of whiz-bang action sequences and only the shallow veneer of theme or character development on top of it. Make no mistake, Star Trek Beyond is a film that can barely get the surface-level details right, and stumbles in its abbreviated attempts to go beyond them. And the result is a generally dull action film that could have its serial numbers shaved off and thus be wholly unrecognizable as anything related to Star Trek.
The film is most striking in how it fails where its predecessors succeeded. It's true that there was little of the heady optimism at play in the 2009 Star Trek reboot, but what the movie lacked in thematic heft, it made up for in terms of giving the audience a journey focused on character. The greatest conflicts in the film are not between the Enterprise and the Romulans, but within and between the film's two biggest characters. Kirk starts out as a good-for-little scoundrel and through his experiences in the film, evolves into an officer, albeit one who is still charmingly rough around the edges. Spock starts out as a man unable to reconcile his human side and his Vulcan side, and through his experiences in the film's adventure, he find balance and peace. Most importantly, those two character arcs intersect in meaningful ways and make us invested in those in charge of the enterprise.
By contrast, Beyond suggests a similarly intriguing start for both Kirk and Spock, but peters out between the beginning of their journey and the intended destination. The idea of a somewhat jaded James T. Kirk, having lost some of his passion, wondering if his mission even matters given the enormity of space, and contemplating whether to hang up his spurs, is a superb one that made me think director Justin Lin and writer Simon Pegg (who also plays Scotty) and Doug Jung (who plays Sulu's husband) were following the 2009 film's lead in this regard. Similarly, the notion that Spock, rattled by his alternative timeline counterpart's death, also feels inclined to give up Starfleet to focus on carrying on the elder Spock's goal to rehabilitate the Vulcan people, creates numerous storytelling possibilities and a parallel sense of restlessness to the character that mirrors Kirk's. The state of play as Beyond begins seems poised to tell another compelling, character-focused story of growth and change.
Instead, by the end of the film, Kirk has decided to stay in active duty; Spock stays a part of his crew, and the reasons for their change of heart are fuzzy at best. Whereas the 2009 film spent ample time showing events that marked the changes in Kirk and Spock's mentalities and perspective, Beyond amounts to something along the lines of, "They wanted to leave. They went on an adventure. Now they don't" without nearly enough connective tissue to get at the why of the shift in their plans. It's an Underpants Gnomes approach to character development that falls flat. There are vague concepts of "unity" as an important principle floating the film, but Beyond does little to tie it into concrete incidents that motivate Kirk and Spock to be in a different place at the end of the film than they were at the beginning. Instead, they just go on an adventure and come back different, which makes their supposed evolution narrative unsatisfying and ultimately unearned.
It doesn't help that the whole "unity is good" concept underlying the film is dramatized in about as shallow and trite a manner as one could imagine. It's a fluffy theme to begin with, and Star Trek Beyond doesn't do much to make it any more weighty or meaningful in how its realized in the conflict of the film or the characters' actions, especially in the context of on-the-nose dialogue to that effect. Say what you will about Star Trek Into Darkness, and there's plenty to say, but at least the film had the moxie to explore, as its hallowed predecessors did, some of the major social and political issues of the day. There's room to criticize Into Darkness's approach, and other flaws derivative elements that hobbled the film out of the gate, but tackling concepts of militarization and the security state feels of a piece with the politically-charged spirit of The Original Series and its successors. Its reach exceeded its grasp, but there was a nobility in the attempt.
Beyond, on the other hand, is content to coast on a vague Barney-esque notion of teamwork as a guiding principle and theme that barely feels worthy of a generic space adventure, let alone a franchise like Star Trek. The new ally introduced in the film is a lone wolf, wayward traveler brought into the Starfleet fold, whereas it's villain is motivated by a rejection of unity and the benefits of collective action, in a skin-deep realization of that contrast meant to be the film's focal point. Idris Elba is completely wasted in the latter role, an outstanding actor reduced to snarls and platitudes that do not do him justice. In fact, few cast members are given material worthy of their talents. What little they're given to work with in terms of expressing this theme, undercooked though it may be, is lost in a sea of stock beats and action set pieces that feel almost wholly disconnected and inadequate to convey what the film is shooting for.
Those set pieces, which ought to be the saving grace of bringing in a director like Justin Lin, are also a surprising weakness for the film. While there's no shortage of action, almost all of it is shot and directed in a nigh-incoherent fashion that makes it difficult to follow what's happening from scene to muddled scene. Lin and cinematographer Stephen F. Windon pay little mind to ideas of geography or scope, rendering what ought to be a strength of Beyond, instead a collection of occasionally-cool moments with little to put them in context with one another. The film can boast an enjoyable anti-gravity sequence, and its Beastie Boys-fueled excitement is enjoyable if silly, but for the most part, the visual fireworks of Beyond fizzle out into a hodgepodge of undifferentiated combat and explosions.
The film does have its merits. The dynamic between Spock and Bones is the best realized element of the film and lives up to the humor and endearing qualities that Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley imbued into that relationship. And for however much the film's action falters, its design work is impeccable, from the unique look of newcomer Jaylah to the geometric wizardry of the Yorktown Space Station. But they pale in comparison to the fundamental elements of Star Trek, whether they be from the pre-2009 shows and movies or the Abrams films, where Beyond totally misfires.
At its best, Star Trek features the focus on character that drove the original series, bolstered the 2009 reboot, and is realized in only a meager, perfunctory fashion in Beyond. The franchise can soar in its examination of meaningful social and political issues in a fantastical setting, in keeping with its science fiction roots, a virtue Beyond sacrifices in favor of a generic message about working together. This film skips the heavy lifting of showing us how the characters at the core of the franchise develop and grow, and the burden of telling a story that can be both heady and thrilling, in favor of an easy, unambitious action film that has a handful of good moments, but only the patina of what made Star Trek special. Star Trek Beyond is like any other middling cinematic sci-fi adventure of the past decade, with only a Trek-inspired coat of paint to distinguish it, and that's the film's greatest sin.
Edit: On rewatch nearly five years later I...still agree almost completely with my previous review. I probably wouldn't rate it as poorly, but even knowing where everything is heading, this film is a narrative mess that substitutes bland platitudes and indiscriminate action for having an actual story or character or point with any genuine depth. With Simon Pegg as a credited screenwriter, there's more charming references to The Original Series (e.g. Kirk ripping his shirt, Chekov claiming that scotch is Russian) and even some homages to Star Trek: Enterprise (a mention of the Xindi!). But those cute callbacks don't make up for this flashy, indiscriminate clump of a movie.
The one thing I would revise is that there's at least a decent arc for Spock here. he thinks that living up to Spock Prime's legacy means leaving Starfleet to help Vulcans, only to see how much his friends and colleagues need him and realize that Spock Prime's legacy was helping and standing by his friends. It's bare bones, but it's there, and the movie deserves credit for it.
Still, a rewatch does this no favors. If anything, it just confirms the film's Underpants Gnomes approach to storytelling, the jumbled pacing and lumpy structure, and the unavailing action sequences that make it something less than the fun success of ST'09 and less even than the noble failure of Into Darkness. I'd probably upgrade it to a [5.5/10], but it's still a real low-light among the reboot films.
This movie is your brain on drugs. Lots of stuff going on, but someone forgot to include coherency... and a plot.
Some parts were marvelous, but I completely disliked the NSA character and the way it was presented.
awful plot, wonderful job. congratulations to the people responsible on creating the animation, bad job to those who created the history
I honestly think they could have done a better job with this movie. Not sure why it is nominated for best picture, but it's not my cup of tea. The plot is weak and some acting is even weaker, which makes it funny because it's about a play. The dialog is long and sometimes lots of words have been used but nothing is said.
Scales new heights when the film takes to the streets but hits potholes whenever it tries for quieter character moments.
While I walked in the theater I expected a good movie. Because I liked the concept of the story as it was set-up in the trailer. But mostly because I 'trusted' Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman to pick a good movie to play in. While I walked out the theater I had different thoughts unfortunately. The film was disappointing to me and I will try to explain why. It wasn't the acting and 'world building' but I disliked the directing, screenplay and filming.
First of the directing and filming, all of the action scenes where flooded with shaky cam. This was handled very badly in my opinion. I couldn't figure out what was happening most of the time. Due to the shaky cam, number of cuts, close-ups and the peace of all that. That was the main reason why I disliked 'Safe House', which is also made by Daniel Espinosa. It almost felt like he was trying the make the filming and directing 'not perfectly on purpose' to make it 'real' but it didn't worked out at all! It all felt kinda clumsy and there were way to many meaningless shots overall. There were some exceptions, some shots of the cities and area's they visited where beautifully. They really landed the rough and dark tone that they successfully tried the show. Although they over did it sometimes.
Then the screenplay or script, which is based on a 'best selling novel', again! First of you get a nice back story of Tom Hardy's main character, which felt real to me. All of the other characters felt a bit empty, like they were there to fill a place that was written for them. That made it almost impossible for my to understand the characters and the decisions they make. I also missed the whole balance in the story. The first part was way to long ( set-up ), the middle was rush ( plot kicks in ) and the final party ( ending ) was also rushed and kinda unbelievable. I think because of this I wasn't sucked in to the story. The second and third party felt way to easy and straight forward. Like solving a child murder case which is spread over thousand of miles is easy. I think the story could be told in a better and more interesting way.
Overall I was disappointed by Child 44. The dark Russia after WWII was displayed intense but the story lagged suspension and balance. The action scenes sucked even more than the conversations because of the directing and filming methods they just. Tom Hardy did is part good but not brilliant and unfortunately Gary Oldman's characters was barely in it. I give Child 44 an 5 aka 'Meh'! Thanks for reading!
Child 44 is a mockery of true events drowned in a mediocre love story. If you want the true story about Andrei Chikatilo, you should leave this alone and try Citizen X instead, a 1995 movie with Stephen Rea and Donald Sutherland.
World Premiere Review: 11/14/16
Frozen: Tropical Edition. But, that's not a bad thing. It's a really good movie with amazing animation, charming story and excellent songs (if you're into that). It's by no means flawless. Repetitiveness is the main issue, especially with certain physical humor which is done to death, particularly the wonky eyed chicken. I won't spoil what it does, but I found myself going "AGAIN?! COMON." Adults will find it charming and kids will think it's hilarious.
Suffering Sappho!
If there were ever a movie I wanted to be good, (though, realistically, I want almost every movie to be good) it would probably have been this one. Believe me, I was pretty hyped for this film. Actually, my initial reaction to the trailer for this movie was an awesome (in the literal, Biblical sense) headdesk, crashing to the table below, as I bellowed my indignation that I could not have been involved in the making of this movie myself! Is that a little grandiose? Sure, but so am I, so bear with me.
Unfortunately, the reality of this movie turns out to be a little bit of a patchy mess. It is uninspired in its aesthetic (not terribly surprising from the director of infamous Disney reboot "Herbie Fully Loaded," lesbian B movie "D.E.B.S.", and several episodes of "The L Word"), the pacing is erratic and jumbled at times, and the writing flies in the face of historical accuracy and vernacular speech.
Where the movie deserves praise, although sometimes at the expense of its worldbuilding mise en scene, is in the casting and performances of the three principals, Evans, Hall, and Heathcote (in credits order, though not truly in order of importance or merit). Here, each had moments of true brilliance, as the triad stood alone (sometimes too alone, to the detriment of the too-flimsy film world around them) against a sea of angry, very red, very white faces.
I never felt disengaged from the characters, and they were written flawlessly. Where these figures deviate from history (which, I hear, is at many points) I will allow poetic license, because they are painted so vividly and with such charming life. Even when the script is bad, the actors presented it well. Just as even when the script called for the location to be set in New York state, it still looked like Massachusetts.
This movie was truly robbed. With a better cinematographer, two more really good rewrites, and maybe some more specific focus, this movie could have been a serious awards contender, and a very great piece of art. As it is, it's been a blip through the cinemas, to be misunderstood and forgotten until such time as polyamory is more accepted in the social mores of the day, and it can be further misunderstood and miscategorized as evidence of how backward society was in 2017, that this was our take on the Marston/Moulton story.
Of course, by that time, there will be a better "Wonder Women" movie. There had damn well better be.
All the moral complexity and historical sensitivity of a Disney sequel.
At least Judi Dench is brilliant. As usual.
Haha this movie is so unexpectedly bad, you think it's one kind of movie then it just does a hard 180 into insanity. I wish I didn't have the twist spoiled because I would of loved to have seen this unfold and had the big WTF moment.
It's really really pretty, gorgeous, beautiful, but the plot is so all over the place...
This is a smart, funny and very entertaining movie with a killer soundtrack. The soundtrack has a little bit of everything and is choreographed perfectly into the action. Ansel Elgort is great and so are Kevin Spacey and Jon Hamm.
EDIT: Saw it again and it is still just as great.
I got massive GTA 5 vibes from this. Just look at it: heists, hijacking cars, more heists, criminals being portrayed as eccentric & nuts, planning heists in an abandoned urban building; hard to miss the influence.
It still feels like an Edgar Wright film though. In fact, it very much starts like one of his comedies, but then it takes a complete tonal shift around the halfway mark. It becomes much darker, and it’s suddenly driven by tension instead of jokes.
A lot of movies can’t pull that off, but this one does simply because you can look at this premise as lighthearted, but there’s nothing too ridiculous or stupid for it not to work as a serious thriller either.
The directing and editing are really stylish and inventive, the performances are good, plenty of character development (a lot of which is done visually), excellent music selection, and there are a few twists in the second half I didn’t see coming.
My only complaint is that the romance subplot starts a bit clunky, but it evens out as the film goes along.
8.5/10
great Actors but but terrible movie. The first part was okay but the end of the movie... no no no
[9.3/10] At first blush, Baby Driver writer-director Edgar Wright and fellow director Wes Anderson don’t seem like a natural pairing. Wright’s films, like Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead tend to be overtly comedic, include a good quotient of action, and bring an adventure-focused quality to the proceedings. Anderson’s, by contrast, tend to be quieter, more droll pictures, that are certainly funny and have their share of exciting moments, but which find their form in the more reserved, music box sensibilities of Anderson’s oeuvre.
And yet, Wright and Anderson’s films have something very much in common. They both create films where it seems like the world was built to fit their characters, rather than more typical films where the main personalities find themselves struggling in a world that’s indifferent to them or even more commonly, which doesn’t fit them at all. Whether it’s Anderson’s elegant dioramas or Wright’s “everything’s foreshadowing” rube goldberg machines, the environments of these films bend to our heroes, not the other way around, resulting in some wonderfully well-choreographed cinema.
Baby Driver is the apotheosis of this tack, brought to bear in the form of car chases, gunfights, and the best jukebox soundtrack this side of the galaxy (and any attendant guardians). Indeed, Marvel Studios’ Guardians is a nice reference point, as both films not only feature countless rockin’ tunes, but also center on roguish but decent young men, holding onto to the last holy artifacts of their mother, finding solace in music and falling in with a rough crowd before deciding to stand for something more. It’s kismet that star Ansel Elgort, who plays the lead (appropriately named “Baby’), is signed on to be the past and future Han Solo in the latest standalone Star Wars flick, a character who’s very much in the DNA of Guardians’ Peter “Star-Lord” Quill.
Independent of any comic book counterparts, however, Baby Driver doesn’t offer much in terms of an original premise. Baby is a badass driver and a decent kid, mixed up with some bad folks, tentative about the prospect of blood and his hands, wanting to start a new life with his lady love. There are a lot of tropes in the film: the quiet but effective young naif, the loose cannon gangster, the slimy mastermind, the ingenue who represents a beacon of hope, the inevitable moral dilemma.
But what the film lacks in originality in its setup, it more than makes up for in performance, texture, and execution. Baby Driver has a murderer’s row of performers who chew up and spit out Wright’s script and make what could otherwise be stock character come alive and compensate for any dearth of depth with the sheer vividness of their presence.
Kevin Spacey looks alive for the first time in ages, bringing a blasé menace as the organizer of each heist. Jamie Foxx is at his extroverted best, rolling through pointed monologues and bringing a lived-in flavor of crazy. Lily James has enough homespun, wanderlust charm to balance out her underwritten part. Elgort is necessarily more reserved, but equally endearing and a fine fulcrum for the movie. And Jon Hamm brings his Mad Men practiced-gentility in a fashion that makes him seem like that much monstrous when the scales fall.
But while the performances carry the film in its quieter moments, what sets Baby Driver apart is sequence after superlative sequence of breathtaking kinetic cinema. Not content to simply toss in explosive but empty action to keep the heart-pumping, Wright, cinematographer Bill Pope, and editor Paul Machliss create these elegantly constructed set pieces of gorgeous synchronous stunts, twists, and turns, the hum right along with the music, just like the protagonist.
That works whether Baby is blowing the doors off the film’s opening with a series of death-defying terms perfectly sequenced to his backing track. It works when the young man finds himself embroiled in a firefight where surprise shots and returned fire blast back and forth in time with the beat. It works in chases on foot as the rhythmic thump of the tune of the moment matches the energy of pursuers and pursued alike. Even when Baby goes to get coffee, the world moves with him; from the graffiti on the walls to the buskers on the street everything goes where he goes.
In the same way, the film doesn’t so much present action scenes as it does ballets of chrome and octane. Baby Driver oozes with style and tempo, knowing how to hold the audience’s attention through great escapes that and close scrapes that keep topping one another, and quieter scenes where the tension comes from sweet interactions juxtaposed with combustive elements, leading the viewer to wonder which will win the day.
It’s also a near perfectly-paced movie. Like a perfect mixtape, Wright knows when to kick things into gear and when to slow things down to let the audience catch its breath before putting his foot on the gas once more. While the film starts to feel a bit overextended at the very end, with the villain creeping into unkillable slasher territory, for the vast majority of its runtime it holds your attention from moment to moment and scene to scene expertly. In that, Wright matches the talents of his protagonist, directing and maneuvering this complex machine like it were a rough-and-tumble ballerina, full of slick thrills and inimitable grace.
He achieves this with a movie, a setting, and a lead character, that each move like clockwork in sync with one another. While Baby Driver is neither as quiet or twee as Wes Anderson’s work, it brings with it the film’s own sense of longing and melancholy beneath an intricately constructed world. Every scene is a dance, every moment a confluence of sound and imagery and movement, whether in the pulse-pounding races against cops or robbers, or gauzy imaginings of another life that might be. In Baby Driver, Wright has built his most elegant, intricate toy, and it’s a treat and a pleasure to see him play on the screen once again.
Really enjoyed this - way better than those stupid churned-out Furious chase movies... it actually has a story... and acting!
The movie was absolutely exhilarating during the action sequences, especially the car chases. But, the second the action sequences stop, the movie grinds to a halt with stereotypical writing and characters. What also doesn't help is the self-conscious need to be cool that the film has. Some would call it style, I would call it distracting.
One last job? Seen it before. And the characters in the film are cardboard cutouts. The worst of the bunch is Jamie Foxx's character Bats. Bats is a homicidal maniac who is hired by Spacey's Doc for a two jobs. Doc seems to be a very careful man who plans meticulously. Why Doc would pick an unhinged impulsive person like Bats to do a job is beyond me. The whole thing reminds me of the same flaw in Michael Mann's otherwise excellent heist film Heat where De Niro's McCauley hires a similarly homicidal and impulsive Waingro onto his team.
Did I like the film? Kind of. Yes, for the action sequences that are fantastically shot by Bill Pope and edited by Jonathon Amos and Paul Machliss. No, for pretty much everything else.
I liked the music and driving. Being hit over the head with the romance aspect of the movie? Not that cool. Also, not even a little bit believable. Maybe it would have been a better choice for him to have a little sister, or something, that he wanted to protect, and leave the lady love angle out of it. Also, Baby is a stupid name. Maybe there's some kinda reference there that I'm not getting?
(Why did they keep repeating Baby's and Debora's names? It got so annoying and awkward)
